Megara Quotes

I'm a damsel, I'm in distress, I can handle this. Have a nice day!

MEGARA: You love the light so much? AMPHITRYION: I do, I love its hopes.

Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

....I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would, if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was best. (tr Jowett)

From good people you’ll learn good, but if you mingle with the bad you’ll destroy such soul as you had.” —MUSONIUS RUFUS, QUOTING THEOGNIS OF MEGARA, LECTURES, 11.53.21–22

MEGARA Wait for worse? You love the light so much? AMPHITRYON I do, I love its hopes.

I know now that love means showing up for one another and trusting that the other person always has your back. It means asking for help sometimes, and not thinking that means you look weak. Love means opening your heart to another, no matter the consequences.

Whatever fate ordains, danger or hurt, or death predetermined, nothing can avert.

No one will ever make necessity not happen.

If one truly wants to live, they need to open their heart to others, and I have. No matter what comes next for me, I know now I loved and was loved in return.

If I don't return, make sure Hercules moves on from all of this," Meg said. "Meg..." Phil swallowed hard. It was the first time he'd called her by her actual name. She tried to put her spinning thoughts into words. "I don't want him wasting his immortality on me. He's a good guy who gives so much of himself. He deserves to have someone do that for him in return. Got it?" Phil looked at her. "Wow, you really do love the guy, don't you?

I can see the thickness to your skin, Megara. You are tough. Courageous. Proud. I will assist you however I can." Meg had heard tales of Athena helping those on heroic endeavors, but she'd never imagined she'd be worthy of such a thing.

Why, then, did the Americans invest so much in Vietnam when, in comparison with the whole of their interests at the time, so little was at stake there? Thucydidean resemblances, I think, suggest an answer. Megara might look like a trifle, Pericles told the Athenians in 432 B.C.E., but if they yielded on that small matter “you will instantly have to meet some greater demand.” “Without the United States,” John F. Kennedy warned a Texas audience on the morning of November 22, 1963, “South Viet-Nam would collapse overnight,” and American alliances everywhere were equally vulnerable. There was no choice, Pericles insisted, but to “resist our enemies in any way and in every way.” For, as Kennedy added: “We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom.” 58 However distant they may be in time and space, statements like these perch precariously across scale. For if credibility is always in doubt, then capabilities must become infinite or bluffs must become routine. Neither approach is sustainable: that’s why walls exist in the first place. They buffer what’s important from what’s not. When one’s own imprecisions pull walls down—as Pericles and Kennedy did when they dismissed the possibility of giving anything up—then fears become images, images become projections, and projections as they expand blur into indistinctiveness.

She'd died, been saved from the river Styx, and been offered the chance to become a god all in one day. It was a lot to swallow for any girl.

Happy the lover who exercises, then Goes home to sleep all day with a handsome boy.

Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timidity and compliance. Pure of stain! But the artist is the secret criminal in our midst. He is the agent of progress against authority. you are right to be a scholar. A scholar is all scruple, an artist is none. The artist must lie, cheat, deceive, be untrue to nature and contemptuous of history. I made my life into my art and it was an unqualified success. The blaze of my immolation threw its light into every corner of the land where uncounted young men sat each in his own darkness. What would I have done in Megara!? - think what I would have missed! I awoke the imagination of the century. I banged Ruskin's and Pater's heads together, and from the moral severity of one and the aesthetic soul of the other I made art a philosophy that can look the twentieth century in the eye. I had genius, brilliancy, daring, I took charge of my own myth. I dipped my staff into the comb of wild honey. I tasted forbidden sweetness and drank the stolen waters. I lived at the turning point of the world where everything was waking up new - the New Drama, the New Novel, New Journalism, New Hedonism, New Paganism, even the New Woman. Where were you when all this was happening?

The historian Cassiodorus believed that the selective destruction of Alaric, as regards the Greek monuments, was of good effect. Alaric had some taste and was awed by really great art. The Greeks were only human, and all their work could not have been excellent. But almost all their ancient work that survived the ravages of Alaric was of unsurpassed excellence. There is abominable and worthless ancient Greek art in Asia Minor, in Constantinople, in Thebes, in Eritrea, in the Cyclades and other islands. There is little or none of this worthless ancient art surviving in the path of the Gothic Greek adventure; not in Athens, or Megara or Corinth or Argos. Sparta does not figure in the account at all; it never had art. It is said that Alaric destroyed half of the art of Greece. It may have been the worst half. He was a critic of unusual effectiveness.

Listen People. These are the words of Susarion, son of Philinus, from Tripodeske in Megara. Women are a bane: but nevertheless it is not possible to live in a household without bane. For to marry or not to marry either is baneful.

He was listening with rapt attention. "I'm boring you, aren't I? I don't usually tell anyone my life's story.” She'd never told anyone particular anecdote, actually.

The best thing for man would be not to have been born and never seen the light of day. The next best thing is to pass the gates of death as quickly as possible.

No one is better suited for solving crimes." Meg cocked her head to one side, her fiery-red ponytail swaying in the light breeze. "If you consider the scheming I did for Hades crime work, then maybe. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. This is one small gig." A gig that would barely pay the rent, but she couldn't be choosy. There wasn't a large market for women who'd recently been freed from the Underworld, and she needed to make money.

I guess this is what I get for agreeing to give a woman a job like this." Meg placed her hands on her hips. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that as a man, you were making such good headway on your own without me.

Are you accusing a god spying on you, Megara?" Hera asked. "Accusing? No," Meg said. "Guessing? Yes. It's what I would be doing if I had a son who almost renounced his heritage to date a mortal. I'd want to know if she was worth all the fuss." Meg shrugged. "Call it a hunch.

I want to tell you of something which has brought me no small comfort, in the hope that perhaps it may have some power to lighten your sorrow too. AS I was on my way back from Asia [to Rome on changing sides after Pharsalus], sailing from Aegina towards Megara, I began to gaze at the landscape around me. There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes. [These cities had not recovered from the Roman annexation of Greece in the middle of the previous century: Corinth had been sacked.] I began to think to myself: “Ah, how can we little creatures wax indignant if one of us dies or is killed, ephemeral beings as we are, when the corpses of so many towns lie abandoned in a single spot? Check yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a mortal man.” That thought, I do assure you, strengthened me not a little. If I may suggest it, picture the same spectacle to yourself. Not long ago so many great men died at one time, the Roman Empire was so gravely impaired, all its provinces shaken to pieces; can you be so greatly moved by the loss of one poor little woman’s frail spirit?

we look for rams and stallions of fine stock, and one believes that good will come from good; yet a man minds not to wed the lewd daughter of an evil sire. Marvel not then, that the stock of our folk is tarnished; for the good now mingles with the base...

Who are you going to believe, son? Me or this mortal?" Meg's eyes flashed. "I'm not the one who let his own child be stolen while he slept." The minute the comment left her lips, she knew she'd gone too far. The other gods quickly began to dissipate. Hera stayed put, but Meg wondered if she was in shock. Zeus's face turned almost purple as he seemingly grew three times his size. Behind him, the sky darkened like an approaching thunderstorm and lightning bolts crisscrossed the sky. Hercules instinctively stepped in front of Meg, putting one hand on her arm, but she nudged it away. She'd lived with Hades. She wasn't afraid to stand up to Zeus. "You dare question my judgment, Megara?" Zeus thundered as the storm clouds rolled in around him. Lightning crashed dangerously close to where she and Hercules were standing. "You, the woman who worked to keep my son from completing his quest?" On second thought, maybe she should be a little afraid of Zeus. Especially now that she realized he was well aware of what she had done.

Was the god of marriage and birth offering her an olive branch? Meg took a deep breath and tried to keep her words in check for a change while she deferred to Hera. "What do you suggest?" Hera continued to look at her. "That depends. Are you in love with my son?" "Love?" Meg took a step back. She immediately thought back to something she'd said to Hercules as she lay dying back in Thebes. People always do crazy things when they're in love. Was that what this was? Love? Was she in love with a god? No. Yes. Possibly.

While her mother worked, Megara took care of their own life- cleaning their rented spaces, cooking so her mother wouldn't have to after a backbreaking day, and minding the money her mother brought home. If young Megara had learned anything from her time with her father, it was to hold on to her drachmas. She counted and recounted what her mother earned and learned to keep a budget for food so that they wouldn't go hungry if they could help it. And though girls weren't afforded school, Meg taught herself to read using the stone signs in the square, stealing Homer's works out of the school-aged boys' bags when she could. She watched the merchants in the market accept payment from shoppers, learning how to count coins and what each one meant.

Thanks for the bargain, Theos," Megara said to the young man in the marketplace who had given her a good price on day-old bread. "It's been a real slice." Then she turned with an expertly timed flip of her lengthening red hair- it was almost to her waist now- and swung her hips as she sashayed away. As Megara grew, she was learning that her charm was a tool she could rely on.

Hera said if I proved my worth, she'd make me a god so Hercules and I could be together." Phil nearly fell over again. "Holy Hera." Red nodded. "My thoughts exactly.

Oh, what the hell." She stepped in and pressed the button. Maybe using the word hell was her mistake. The doors closed and then opened again, filling with smoke that wound its way around her shoulders and down her body before she could react. She found herself being pulled forward. Hades's face suddenly appeared inches from her own. "Hello there, Meg-let. Miss me?

Meg quickened her pace when she saw a meadow peek out over the next hilltop. As she got closer, the sun seemed to pull away from the clouds and the grass under her feet turned a bright green. She heard definite sounds of a party in the distance and quickened her pace. The air started to smell sweeter. Were those apricots she smelled? Or figs? And there were trees again! She hadn't realized how much she missed them till she saw them growing there along the path. They had perfect little green leaves and flowers budding on branches. And at the side of the road was a woman kneeling over a garden tending to a bed of hydrangeas blooming in rich fuchsias, blues, and whites. "Those are gorgeous!" Meg said in surprise. They were the most colorful things she'd seen in the Underworld and the vibrancy warmed her heart for a moment. "I can't believe anything like that grows down here!" The woman looked up at her and smiled, her eyes dark yet warm. "Thanks. I wasn't sure if it was possible myself, but with deep rooting and some good soil, it seems anything is." "You planted these?" Meg said in awe. The woman looked pleased as she glanced at the colorful beds of blooms in the nearby meadows. "You could say that. I love the drama of it all- the seeds being sown, the elements working for and against them, the flower erupting against all odds, then the death of the bloom. So much more exciting than my old life.

While Megara's deep red hair and pale skin resembled her father's, she shared her mother's unusual violet eyes. Their eyes were so magnetic a day didn't go by when someone in the street or at the market didn't comment on them.

In the last few years, Meg had been to hell and back- literally. She'd sold her soul to the god of the Underworld and spent her days and nights fulfilling Hades's every demand. While she still walked in the land of the living, her life was no longer her own. Meeting Hercules had awoken something in her. Honestly, she wasn't sure what that something was, but she knew it felt important. Why else would she have leaped in front of a falling pillar to save him, causing her own demise in the process? That moment, and Wonder Boy's rescue of her afterward, was a blur now, like so many nightmares she tried hard to forget. The next thing she remembered was air filling her lungs as if she'd held her breath underwater for too long. Then there had been a crack of lightning, a flurry of clouds, and she and Wonder Boy were being whisked into the heavens toward Mount Olympus.

You don't know what it's like to stand in front of someone you thought you loved who betrayed you..." Her voice died out and they looked at one another. Hercules couldn't help a small smirk. Her cheeks began to burn. "Okay, I'm going to eat my own words now. It was just hard, okay?" She ripped the poppy into pieces that blew away in the wind. "Of course it was," he said gently. "But you still have to face him if you want to learn about Katerina. And who knows? Maybe he'll surprise you." He touched her hand. "People can do that, you know." Wonder Boy really was too good for this world.

In the most notorious version of the myth, as told by Pseudo-Apollodorus,36 Hera drives Heracles mad, so much so that he murders his wife Megara and their children (I can’t apologize enough if you only know this character from the Disney movie and I have just broken your heart. It kills me too, for what it’s worth).